Long cold winter

I keep thinking that if I can just get through this winter... And then the rest of the year I long for winter again.. That's just a little crazy..

It was cold on the hill this weekend.. And those hand warmer things don't seem to work when it's 0 deg F.. They heated right up when I got in my warm car.. They should put more stuff in them or something.. (Just a suggestion hand warmer guys..) I guess I was expecting them to be warm.. Maybe they don't work so well when it's cold out?..

Snowboarders in the wind

It was windy on the top of the ski hill today. (or should I say snowboard hill..) Made it hard to keep your balance at times.

Picture from Wild Horse Island

Here is a picture I took of Skeeko Bay and Dayton Bay from my last hike in the fall on Wild Horse Island. I don't think I posted it before although I did post some pictures from that morning. I like to hike up there on the island and watch the sun come up over Flathead Lake. I've been looking through pictures and dreaming about summer once again.. Not that I'm done skiing yet..

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I noticed a couple of spots on this picture so I repaired it. You couldn't see them unless you clicked on the photo and enlarged it but it bothered me. I guess there's something to be said for keeping your lens clean.. My cameras get a lot of abuse.

I retain all rights to my photos.  Please do not use any of my photos without permission.

Pot Hole road

I tend to find and go down roads like this. As much as I try not to be a redneck, I guess I just can't hep it..

A room with a view

This is the view from the last hospital room. A room with a view.. It really wasn't a bad view considering, and at night you could see the whole beautiful city of Spokanistan.

I've been spending quite a bit of time in hospital rooms with famliy members lately. Everyone is ok by the way, but there's always that uncertainty.. Like, when is the doctor coming today?.. Are they going to let us out or want another test?.. So you wait and wait and wait.. They even have rooms just for waiting in.. Are you waiting for something?. I guess I'm waiting for test results, or paperwork to get done but I'm not sure.. Why don't you wait in the waiting room?.. There's more of the same uncomfortable chairs in there.. Will I wait faster in there?.. I'm thinking, why don't they make some of these waiting rooms into task accomplishing rooms?.. If they'd get things done faster we wouldn't have to sit around waiting so much..

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Or put the people waiting to work.. Put a sign on the wall,.. If you have typing skills report to the blood lab.. Handyman with plumbing experience needed in hydrotherapy, floor 8...
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I always wonder when I see a patient walking down the hall,. Gosh, I wonder what's wrong with that guy?.. I wonder if he even knows? Nobody seems to know what's going on. I'm not even sure the doctor knows what's going on because the tests results never seem to come back. He's like a substitute doctor anyway,.. only there for the day and tomorrow you get a new doctor who doesn't seem to know what's going on. Maybe they know and just don't want to tell you.

People in the hospital always feel trapped and want to get out. I always sort of feel like that,. like the whole world is moving along outside while you are sitting around waiting. Even if it's a town like this, it's still better than being in the hospital. When they built this town they managed to make the maximum congested mess in the smallest space possible.. I guess being in the hospital isn't too bad here when you actually think about leaving..

Camera phone pictures

I guess I'm the last person on the planet to get a phone with a camera on it.. And of course I got a really bad one, so I guess I'll go around and take lots of bad pictures.. (I'll convince myself that bad is the new good..)

I retain the rights to all of my photos.  Do not use without permisson.

First bike ride of 2011

I decided to go on my first bike ride of 2011 since the snow has all melted in town for the time being. This was a job for the old Schwinn Traveler with its chrome fenders and big tires. And this was what it looked like as I rode in the bike lane.

I've been wanting ride my bike since the snow melted in town and it was very nice. I rode past the golf course and ended up at a park across from a school. I sat on a park bench and watched the kids play while I listened to the radio in my ear buds. Some of the kids were playing football and some were playing soccer.. Various groups around the field all running in different directions. Their motions as they ran reminded me of birds flying around somewhat at random but following a lead. A bell must of rang and they all started to run away, to line up in the distance and go back to class.

Then I realized that I'm the old dude in this picture with an old bike sitting alone on a park bench watching the children play. Hmm.. I thought.. I guess that's not so bad.. Now if I just didn't have to go back to work..

Live to ski

Here's a picture of me on the lift last week. It was clear out and the snow was pretty much frozen solid. It doesn't look like it under the chairlift but the snow really was rock hard. I like it like that. You can really go fast on a week day with race skis. I live for days like that as there's nothing else quite like it. Fast cars don't do it, fast motorcycles come close, but there's nothing like a pair of race skis on a sunny day like that. It's raining outside right now. I suspect it will freeze the mountains again. That's good. Some people like powder, but I like the snow firm. I like the speed and you're less likely to get hurt on firm snow.

There's something about coming up out of the valley fog as you drive up and into the sunshine that does your soul some good. This is a picture of the road up to the resort as I came out of the fog and into the sunshine. I was talking to a guy on the chairlift about this the the other day. The gloom in the valley is totally broken when you rise up and out of the fog and into the light of day. It's really an amazing transformation and it's one of the reasons I love to ski and why I feel so sorry for those who don't who live in ski country. They hate winter as they are always stuck down there in the valley fog half of the time. I know so many people like that and it's really sad..

I guess the sticker in the window of this truck says it best.. Live to ski.. I want one of those!

I'm back

I'm back,.. I couldn't log in for a while. I don't know what it is with me.. First I lost my cell phone. Then I lost my battery charger to my camera.. And then I couldn't log in to blogger...

I can't think of anything else to say about this so I'll post a wierd dream I had.

Weird dream

Ok, so I had a weird dream..

I dreamed that I went to my ex-girlfriend's place to stop in and see how she was doing. She hates me (for no reason) BTW, so when I got there she was less than pleased to see me. She was like,. What are you doing here?.. she said with a less than happy look on her face. Oh I just stopped in to see how you are doing. I said.

I looked around her small apartment. She had a dresser crammed full of shoes. Next to the dresser was an old green sofa, and in the corner of the sofa was a small yellow lizard that looked just like the Geico gecko except it was yellow and it had red shorts on, and a white T-shirt. It was standing there on its hind legs just like the Geico lizard.

What's this? I asked her. Oh that's my baby, she said. Really? I didn't know you were pregnant.. When did you have this? I asked as she went into the bathroom. Last Wednesday, she responded. His name's Sammy, would you mind watching him while I change. And then she shut the door.

I'm thinking,. my ex-girlf (who hates me for no reason) had a yellow lizard for a baby last Wednesday and put red shorts on him and named him Sammy?... No wonder we didn't get along..

Well there I was with Sammy, so I reached down and grabbed him around the waist with his arms arms sticking out above my fist. He just looked at me with that lizard smile. He was kind of slimy, so I put him back down on the sofa.

Then he jumped off of the sofa, ran across the room and went down the heat vent! Oh crap! I thought. She's going to kill me! I'll have to find him before she comes back. So I got my flashlight and was looking down the heat vent. Finally I saw him but it wasn't good. There were some birds down there eating him and all that was left were the red shorts and some leg bones sticking out.

That's how my dream ended.

A warmer time

As the winter weather outside chills us to the bone and dampens our spirits, I think back to a warmer time, and recent trip to Radium Hot Springs in British Columbia. We'll return soon.

It seems to be a place where nothing changes... except the people who go swiming. It's exactly like it was when I was young, and I think I'm getting better at understanding the how the lockers work, and which doors to go in and out of. I'm getting better at reading the signs too, some of which are in French and some are those international picture signs. There's one sign in there that says you can't wear boots. (it had a picture of a boot with a line going through it..)

Man tracks

What kind of beast made those tracks?!... I wondered as I looked at the line of tracks in my yard. Every morning there are different sets of tracks crossing my yard. Cat, dog, rabbit, bird,.. Oh,. wait a minute,. I made that one. I'd gone out to the car the other night and didn't bother to put my shoes on.

I'd blame the tracks on my ex-neighbor woman who I named Sasquatch Woman but she moved out long ago. I named her that because one night I came home in my car and caught her in the headlights and she looked just like a female bigfoot, her arms dragging with her ape like stride as she crossed the road. Only her cigarette betrayed her as a human, but I can understand why people think they've seen bigfoot.

Continental Divide Canada

I brought in the new year in Canada this year and I had a really nice time. It was beautiful today on my return. Here's a picture I took on the continental divide near Banff. I kept trying to get a decent picture of the ubiquitous Candadian flag, and finally got this one one. I'm guessing the other flags are BC on the left and Alberta on the right. Jules,.. you're going to have to help me out on this.

Here's a picture in Koontenay National Park of some of the forest fire burned trees. It will enlarge if you click on it. I wish I'd had more time to just take pictures as it was really beautiful up there today.

Idaho skiing pictures

It has been a pretty good ski season so far. Winter can be pretty long in the northwest so you might as well take up skiing or snowboarding if you live in snow country and make the best of it. If you can't get out, you can come here to my blog and see what it's been like. Here are some of my latest skiing pictures.

It often looks cool and I'm always getting my camera out to take pictures while I ski or ride the chairlift. Everyone enjoys the views even if they stay on the easy trails.

And everyone gets a good workout and lots of fresh air.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I don't have a real Christmas Tree, but here's my Christmas Cyber tree/ trees from Lookout Pass on Christmas Eve.

I took my mom to church and she pointed out a little white angel way at the very top of the tree they had in the church. "Gertrude made that Angel." she said. (my dear old Aunt Gertrude who is no longer with us.) That was so cool to have her there in spirit like that!

I hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Chairlift photo

I have a lot of photos of chairlifts. I don't really know why I take them other than they freak me out so much. I figured out that I spent over 8 hours on just one chairlift a few ski seasons ago. I'm not kidding. Plus it was only one chairlift that I rode that ski season. So I'm thinking I'm going to put my chairlift photos on my side bar. It's something to do anyway..

Last weekend I rode a chairlift exactly like this one with a little ski school kid who was only four years old. He was so small that they had to lift him up and put him on the chair. His legs stuck straight out and his skis straight up off of the end of the seat. So I put my ski poles infront of him as a restraint and I reached around and grabbed his hood with my hand. There was no way he was going to fall off of my chair while he was in my care!

I've ridden that chair with a lot of little ski school kids. Some of them will talk your ear off and some of them won't say a peep, and usually they all wiggle around. This little guy talked a little and I had a hard time hearing him because I had my helmet on and my ear buds in my ears under it. When we got to the top I asked him if he could get off by himself and he said yes, but when the moment came he seemd to say on. so I reached around and grabbed him by the hood and lifted him up and off of the chair and put him down on the snow.

When I started this blog it was going to be about conversations on the ski lift with strangers. It became clear that there wasn't going to be enough material for just that so I blogged about other things. But I still love getting on the chair with someone I don't know and having a conversation with them. It really is like a box of candy in that you never know what you're going to get.

Block heater in my ski car

I read quite a few blogs as I'm sure lots of you do. Some people really have a gift for letting you know what they are doing and thinking and it draws you in. I wish I could be more like that, without totally letting the whole world know what I'm doing..

I really would love to blog about work. There's so much material there. Honestly. I could go on and on about each person, but I made a few rules when I started this blog, and one of them is to not talk about work.. stupid rule.., but a rule none the less..

And I have other blog rules, I won't go into them all. It's more of a formula actually but I guess you'd never know. Another rule is to not talk about my private life. Like my relationships with my friends and such. So I pretty much don't talk about the people in my life except for when my mom had cancer. It doesn't leave a whole lot to talk about.

Having said that, I'm going up to the far north to see my queen. It gets so cold up there that I decided to install a heater in my ski car so I could plug it in at night to keep it warm so it will start in sub whatever temps. They have a different scale to measure temperature up there and nobody can tell really how cold it is. It's sort of like the thermometer on my camper. The numbers all faded off of it so I wrote hot on the top and cold on the bottom. I still use it,.. I just look at it and think,.. well I can see that it's pretty cold.. Anyway I had to try and hunt down a heater that would work in my car. I ordered in a lower radiator hose heater, and tonight put the thing in. It took a couple of hours. So far so good but who knows how cold it will get?

Clothesline

My dryer konked out last week. I only found out about it when I went to get some sheets out of it the other day.

When I was growing up we never had a dryer, just a clothesline. I'd actually been thinking about building one on my back yard for summer use. We also had one in our basment for winter use. So I decided to build one in my basement. I was amazed at how well it worked. You have to plan a little better but it takes way less energy. I like that.

A guy at work gave me an old dryer, but I'm still going to use this clothesline now. Especially for some of my bicycle kits. Some of those you ave to hand wash and air dry.

Dressed to ski

I love a woman in a dress. I wish they'd wear them more often..

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Woops,.. I didn't publish comments on this post because I didn't explain the picture well enough. Sometimes things get lost in the translation. This girl wears a dress for religious reasons. It looks kind of funny for skiing but I think it's pretty awesome.

Flathead Lake canoe

Here's a lonely picture of my canoe at Flathead Lake